The Barnstable County Commissioners unanimously voted to create a special commission to review county government and will look to two past state Senators to co-chair it.

Working from a two-page set of suggestions from the Cape Cod Business Roundtable, a subset of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, the commissioners embraced the idea of an outside review at its March 16 meeting.

“I think it couldn’t come at a better time,” Commissioner Mary Pat Flynn of Falmouth said, noting that the county is undergoing an assessment of the services it provides with a focus on efficiency and redundancy.

The details have yet to be determined, but it is hoped that former state Senators Henri Rauschenbach and Rob O’Leary will agree to serve as co-chairs. Both agreed in principle to the idea, but neither had been contacted prior to the commission taking up the matter this week (see related).

That suggestion for such a review and the involvement of the former Senators was first made by BRT co-chair Elliott Carr Jan. 29 in Harwich during a Cape Cod League of Women Voters forum on the future of County government. That meeting drew an audience of about 110, which Flynn saw as a strong indicator of the level of interest people have in the county.

Among the areas specifically noted for reevaluation, the BRT’s executive committee included the “urgent need for strong executive county administrative leadership,” “review and perhaps revision of the role of the county Assembly and County Commissioners,” and “the need to strengthen direct relationships between county government and the 15 towns.”

If the county commissioners were enthusiastic, Assembly of Delegates members were decidedly less so.

The assembly is tasked in the charter with an every-five-year review of the county charter, the most recent concluding last year and resulting in some technical changes to the document.

The Assembly has discussed the possibility of keeping on some form of charter review committee to continue unfinished work from the last session and in the context of the reforms suggested at the Jan. 29 forum. In the end, it took no action, leaving it to outside groups such as the Roundtable to come to Assembly should they feel compelled to do so.

Mashpee delegate Marcia King questioned the contention that the Business Roundtable represents an independent group for such a review.

“I think they have their charter already written and it’s in the back room ready to come out," King said of the Roundtable. “I have to walk away and say, they’ve already made their decision.”

She's not far off.

At the Jan. 29 forum, Carr said that the Business Roundtable has drafted a revised county charter, explaining "not that we think we should be the ones who should be writing it, but we believe the pace toward regionalization has not been rapid enough."

That’s echoed in the “Statement on County Government” distributed by Carr at the commissioners meeting.

“We have been working actively on a revised county charter. We believe all facets of county government should be reevaluated,” the statement reads.

Barnstable Delegate Tom Lynch didn’t comment on the creation of a commission, but instead opted to praise the commissioners for embracing a document that is quite critical of the county’s executive branch.

“I want to applaud you for not being defensive about this memo,” Lynch told the commissioners, all three of whom attended the Assembly meeting. He said that the memo is “an indictment of the executive branch.”

In response, Flynn said that it may not be easy to hear, but “I don’t mind it coming forward.”

Assembly Speaker Ron Bergstrom said that it is the Assembly that’s charged with charter review, and took some offense to some of the assertions in the BRT statement, especially on wastewater. To underscore the Assembly’s desire to be kept informed and included,Bergstrom said that he reserves the right to appoint the charter review committee.

“We could have dueling committees,” he said.

Truro Delegate Deborah McCutcheon asked a number of questions that the commissioners were not prepared to answer regarding the membership of such a committee, its charge, who would select the membership and whether the Assembly would have a role as it moved forward.

Commissioner chairman Bill Doherty said that the next step is to call a meeting with O’Leary and Rauschenbach to sketch out those details.

Eastham Delegate Teresa Martin, who served as moderator of the Jan. 29 forum, said, “I think it’s exciting that people are out there who care about what we’re doing here.”

She added that the county has not effectively communicated all that it does or the services it provides, and saw this as an opportunity to turn that around.

During the commissioners meeting, former Clerk of Courts Phyllis Day asked about the political realities of such a review and its intersection with the charter review process outlined in the charter.

“It’s a political process as well,” Day told the commissioners and the Business Roundtable representatives. “If it’s going before the voters, then it needs to be at the forefront of these discussions.”

Day said that having served 12 years as clerk of courts, she’s sensitive to the difference between the commissioners’ legislative functions and those of the Assembly. She has remained active in Cape politics, last serving as campaign manager for Lyons’ run for state Senate last year.